Then we must simply agree to disagree. Strongly.
As a C programmer, I try to avoid tripple-nested if-statements, but
duplicating 200 lines of code N times (where N is currently 4, but can
potentially be a large number) simply because 1-2 lines differ between
versions is an order of magnitude worse.

I think there two issues are getting munged/confused here. One issue
is using the same spec file to cover all releases (which I don't
personally see as too problematic if it's simple), and the other issue
is including cruft for non-fedora distributions. The latter,I
personally feel has no place in FE spec files. But that's my opinion,
and I think a decision is required by the packaging committee/FESCO.
Jonathan.